Serhiy Zhadan

"Trainspotting set against a grim post-Soviet backdrop." - Newsweek World Literature Today's Recommended Summer Reads 2016 A city-dwelling executive heads home to take over his brother's gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he finds at home are mysteries and ghosts. The bleak industrial landscape of now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, the Soviet era name of...

A devastating story of the struggle of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine Recalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. When hostile soldiers invade a neighbouring city, Pasha,...

From Ukraine’s leading writer-activist comes an intimate account of resistance and survival in the earliest months of the Russian-Ukrainian war When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Serhiy Zhadan took to social media to coordinate a network of resistance workers and send messages of courage to his fellow Ukrainians. What began as a local organising effort exploded onto the...

From an acclaimed Ukrainian author, snapshots of a city haunted by war The women, men, and children in Serhiy Zhadan's new collection of stories testify to the dignity of daily life in the war-battered Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Through a series of powerful vignettes, we witness the ordinary experiences of people in extraordinary times: weddings, love affairs, tense visits home...

A searing testament to poetry’s power to define and defy injustice, from iconic writer-activist Serhiy Zhadan Since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan has brought international attention to his country’s struggle through his unflinching poetry of witness. In this new selection of poems, forged entirely in wartime, Zhadan honours the memory of the lost...

Brothers Anton and Tolik reunite at their family home to bury their recently deceased mother. An otherwise natural ritual unfolds under extraordinary circumstances: their house is on the front line of a war ignited by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Isolated without power or running water, the brothers' best hope for success and survival lies in the declared ceasefire—the harvest...

An introduction to an original poetic voice from eastern Ukraine with deep roots in the unique cultural landscape of post-Soviet devastation. “This collection of Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan’s poems will likely cement his reputation as the unflinching witness to the turbulent social and political travails of his nation. With an acerbic tone that will seem familiar to admirers of Franz...